'Perfect' meant 'thoroughly completed' — flawlessness grew from the idea that what is truly finished lacks nothing.
As adjective: having all required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as complete as possible. As verb: to make something completely free from faults or defects.
From Old French 'parfit,' from Latin 'perfectus,' the past participle of 'perficere' (to complete, to carry through), composed of 'per-' (through, completely) and 'facere' (to do, to make). The PIE root behind 'facere' is *dʰeh₁- (to put, to place, to do). The original meaning was not 'flawless' but 'thoroughly done, completed' — something is perfect when it has been made all the way through to the end. The modern sense of absolute flawlessness developed from this idea
Chaucer wrote 'parfit' — the Middle English form — in his famous description of the Knight in the Canterbury Tales: 'He was a verray, parfit, gentil knyght.' The spelling was later re-Latinized to 'perfect' to match the Latin 'perfectus,' even though the word had been 'parfit' in English for two hundred years. This is why 'perfect' has a silent letter cluster in the middle — the c was added by scribes who wanted the word to look more Latin.
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